However, Qualcomm has not taken this lying down. The Tegra K1 processor is small enough to be put in mobile devices, but Qualcomm expressed its concern that benchmarking it in a larger machine might have skewed the figures.

Qualcomm said in a statement, "The recently released Nvidia Tegra K1 benchmark scores on an unreleased All-in-One desktop platform are generated without taking into consideration any thermal constraints of a mobile environment.

"For a relevant comparison, we would need to see the Tegra K1 in a mobile use case - assuming it will have some traction in smartphones and tablets - instead of a wired reference design with heat sinks and no need for mobile power management.

"At Qualcomm, we strive to enable the best power efficiency and performance possible. We design Snapdragon processors specifically for the power limits and connectivity requirements for smartphones and tablets to provide the best graphics performance per Watt."

Qualcomm's comments are particularly relevant because Nvidia's quad-core CPU, 192 GPU system on chip (SoC) processor is due for release this summer and Nvidia claims it offers laptop performance using a fraction of the power, allowing mobile device batteries to last longer.